Ally Hensley found out she had no vagina at 16. What doctors told her to do was traumatic.

The first period. The whispered secret in the school toilet stall. The frantic check for a stain on your uniform.

These are formative, secret rites of passage for young women. But for Ally Hensley, that moment never came.

At 16, she was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome (MRKH) — a rare condition where she was born without a womb, cervix or vagina.

Instead of the typical teen milestones, Ally was sent to a London hospital where she was taught to create her own vaginal canal.

The instructions were clinical, the process traumatic: she had to insert a series of Pyrex dilators, pushing until her knuckles turned white. It was, as she describes it, "self-harm by consent."

"It felt like an assault on my body, but I did it to myself," Ally told Mamamia's No Filter.

Listen: No Filter: What happened after Ally Hensley was told she had no vagina. Post continues below.

Nine months later, Ally had a vagina. But the trauma that came with it would last decades.

Her parents tried their best to support Ally, but shame consumed her. The diagnosis shattered her sense of self, and for years, Ally spiralled.

Ally's teen years were lived in secret, lying about having her period and going on birth control to fit in.

"There's no real space to talk about this, certainly with friends and because, how do you say, 'Ah, you never guess what I had to do last night. I had to go and create my vagina. Woo, I've got one'," Ally said.

It's a difficult weight to carry when, overnight, Ally's definition of womanhood was "completely thrown out the window".

"I felt awful, I felt disgusting, I felt broken," she said.

"I feel very sad for my 17-year-old self and all the people who are going through this diagnosis."

Ally aged 16. Image: Supplied.

Fuelled by self-hatred, Ally followed a self-destructive path.

"I hated myself, and I was going to do everything within my power to ensure that that was true," she said.

As a form of punishment, Ally would put herself in situations where she would be treated poorly.

"It was a real weird validation of, 'Yes, you're right, you're not worth it'," she said.

Sex became a way to chase the idea of womanhood — a "numbers game" to feel like she belonged.

"The more I could sleep with people, the more a woman I thought I might feel," she said.

It was a cycle of domestic violence, control and pain that lasted until she finally moved to Sydney.

In Australia, Ally found solace in yoga. The mat became her therapist, teaching her "not to run" from the hard feelings.

Exhausted from being so unhappy, she reached out to a local hospital for support for MRKH, only to find nothing existed.

So, she started one. Suddenly, something clicked within Ally. She'd found her higher purpose.

"I have never felt anything come so effortlessly than I did knowing that I wanted to become an MRKH advocate," she said.

At the time, the media wasn't open to talking about vaginas as Ally wanted, so she had to pivot.

"This is the time to start talking about the condition as raw and as open as I possibly could without turning it into a clickbait exercise," she recalled thinking.

Ally developed the Sisters for Love MRKH Foundation, which has since rebranded to MRKH Australia.

"I was on the telly. I was working with researchers. I was helping women every night… And it just flourished. It was so amazing, best, best era of my life," she said.

Throughout her teenage years, Ally went down a self-destructive path. Image: Supplied.

Years later, as Ally explored egg-freezing and the possibility of having a child through a surrogate, she was forced to confront another harsh reality: the idealised nuclear family wasn't on the cards for her.

"I think I wanted a relationship to be happy more than I wanted a child, if that makes sense. I wanted the whole dynamic," she said.

"I went home that night, and I just thought, 'No, this isn't for me.' I put all the [IVF] files in the bin. I cried profusely, and that was the end."

The finality of it all — losing a boyfriend and the idea of a baby within months of one another — was devastating, but it also brought a new clarity.

"That's when I've really started looking into the word woman and realising that the world does need all types of women in all types of roles. And my role wasn't to be a biological mother to a child," Ally said.

But her journey with grief wasn't over.

It took Ally years to work through her trauma. Image: Supplied.

Another heartbreak came when Ally was forced to quash the last part of her that always hoped kids might be in the future.

Her mother's health led her back to the UK, where Ally found herself forced to choose between using her savings to help save their family's house and the possibility of having a baby in the future.

"I had that money in the bank, and it was the most soul-destroying moment," Ally said.

"Despite knowing that I probably wouldn't have had a child, I always had a little bit of hope and choice in the bank, but we needed a home, and that was the choice I made."

So, she bid goodbye to Esme, the unborn daughter she'd never have, and wrote her a letter to move on.

Ally documented her journey in her book, Vagina Uncensored: A Memoir of Missing Parts. Image: Supplied.

Today, Ally knows her journey is not less than because it doesn't involve a child.

"In the space of a child, I knew that I had to create a lot of magic, and I had to create a life that was really, really exciting and really make it count," she said.

"And that's what I've done, and I've made my parents incredibly proud.

"I think that it's an absolute privilege to love someone that much and to be loved by someone, so there's no obligation in my life when it comes to my parents or the people I have."

Feature image: K Holmes.